Friday, 3 March 2017

Last week, in a quite corner of Cumbria, a seismic political
event happened. The Conservative Party, the party of Government, won a
by-election for the parliamentary seat of Copeland from their official
opposition, depending on how you measure these things the first time that such
a victory had taken place in almost 140 years.

A seat that Labour had held since 1935 had become vacant by
virtue of the fact that the sitting MP, the extremely likeable Jamie Reed, had
found himself a new job. The ensuing by-election campaign, from a Labour
perspective at least, was one of the most distastefully fought in modern times.

Amidst the leaflets from Labour implying that babies would
die if you were to vote Conservative there was great discussion as to whether
the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and by extension his party supported the
nuclear power industry which so many jobs in the constituency rely upon.

It was a perfectly reasonable question to ask especially
considering that there was indeed quite clear evidence to support that in the
past, at least, Mr Corbyn had been very much against the industry.

When Mr Corbyn first campaigned to become Labour leader he
issued a manifesto document called ‘Protecting our Planet’. The document
clearly states “I am opposed to fracking
and to new nuclear on the basis of the dangers posed to our ecosystems” before
going on to say “New nuclear power will
mean the continued production of dangerous nuclear waste and an increased risk
from nuclear accident and nuclear proliferation”.

As many readers are aware I am no fan of Jeremy Corbyn but
it seems to me that he is known for his principled positions and his policy
document seems to honour a stance which, whilst I am not in agreement, is
equally clear and unambiguous.

I certainly don’t intend on writing a dissection of Labour’s
shocking electoral loss here. Those critical of Mr Corbyn will see him as a key
reason for the defeat, his supporters will not be swayed no matter the
evidence. But I do want to focus on one particular element of the post mortem.

On the Friday morning after the Thursday night before one of
Mr Corbyn’s principle supporters, Emily Thornberry MP, was sent out to the
waiting media to defend him.

Appearing on Sky News Ms Thornberry said “Word had got out the Jeremy wasn’t in
favour of nuclear power. That isn’t true. That’s what you call fake news.”

And it is that term ‘Fake News’ that I want us to consider
today.

Whatever you think of Jeremy Corbyn it was undoubtedly
reasonable, given his previous statements on the nuclear power industry, to
question whether he was supportive of the main industry and source of
employment in that part of Cumbria.

When Mr Corbyn was subsequently interviewed by ITV News in
late January he was asked specifically on five occasions whether he supported a
new nuclear power plant at Moorside in the constituency. Each time he deflected
the question and refused to answer directly.

With both his previous statements and his evasiveness in response
to direct questioning it cannot therefore be possibly true that Mr Corbyn’s
positioning on nuclear power was ‘fake news’.

In saying it was Ms Thornberry was unequivocally doing
something we are sadly seeing more and more of. Trying to claim that undeniable
facts are in some way false, trying to blame the media for reporting
inconvenient truths.

Of course the spectre of fake news isn’t something that
started necessarily on this side of the Atlantic and in many ways the Labour
propaganda machine are something of novices.

For real mastery of the term ‘fake news’ we must look to the
new President of the United States, Donald Trump.

It is almost impossible to quantify the role that this new
term played in the election and subsequent administration of Mr Trump. A quick
search on Google for the term ‘Donald Trump Fake News’ will result in over 55
million hits.

Every time the media challenge the Trump administration,
often in the face of demonstrable facts, look no further than the question of
how many people attended President Trump’s inauguration, spokesmen or the
President himself will fire back that the news outlets themselves are being
driven by a ‘fake news’ agenda. That they are the enemies of the people.

And, simply put, things are getting far, far worse. Last
weekend an off-camera press briefing from the White House press secretary Sean
Spicer saw news organisations, largely those most seen to be most critical of
the President, excluded from the event.

Respected news outlets as diverse as CNN, the New York
Times, the Guardian, Daily Mail and BBC amongst others were shut out whilst
those seen as more supportive of the administration notably including Fox News
and the new media organisation Breitbart, whom President Trump’s closest
advisor Steve Bannon is an ex-Chairman, were very much on the list to get in.

There is a hugely important point here. The job of a news
organisations is never to acquiesce to politicians but to investigate and
challenge.

Clearly all too often politicians would very much like to
ignore and deflect the questions that journalists ask of them. It does not
however mean that those questions are invalid or that the news that arises from
them is fake.

It’s undoubtedly true that news organisations have political
stances whether that is the left leaning Guardian through to the more
conservative Daily Mail. We can broadly agree with those editorial positions or
choose to seek our news from an outlet more in tune with our own beliefs.

What is indisputable however is that each one of those
bodies excluded by the Trump administration follow a journalistic code of
ethics of properly sourcing and researching stories that has been passed down
over the generations.

Each of those shut out organisations has ethical standards
far higher than many of the new news media sources that we see proliferating
our social media pages and as consumers of news we have duty to give those
organisations the regard that they warrant.

It is an extremely dangerous precedent to accept the
shutting out of mainstream media from important press-conferences just as it is
an inconvenient truth that more and more politicians are decrying stories they
happen not like as being ‘fake’.

The Catholic Universe is a publication which has been published
for well over 150 years. Every one of us who writes for this esteemed newspaper
is conscious of the need for research, for accurate reporting and for balanced
commentary. Because of that, I am sure it goes without saying, we are proud of
the reputation that we have built for decency and relevance.

Every time that I put pen to paper, or these days start
typing, I know that what we are doing is more than ‘fake news’ created to fit
in with our editorial leanings.

There is undoubtedly an, at times, awkward relationship between
politics and the media. As someone with a foot in both camps I know only too
well that sometimes I would like the press to report things I say on different
ways just as I would like politicians to give straight answers.

But ultimately I understand that it is far better for us all
to have a media who can challenge rather than one in the pockets of our
leaders.

‘Fake News’ is, far too fast, becoming the get out of jail
card for politicians who seek to deflect their own failings. We cannotaccept that narrative or be fooled by it.